justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

Hand writing vs. computer keyboarding. Different?

Which do you prefer – and why?

If I asked you to write something, would you write it by hand or use a computer?

Does using a keyboard to write involve the same mental processes as using a pen or pencil? A stylus? And what difference does it make?

As a community college teacher of business writing, my course focuses on the different types of writing found in today’s workplace: email, texts, instant messages, reports of all types, correspondence between customers and the organization and colleague-to-colleague, and even company blogs. It also includes the critically important skills of preparing an effective resume and cover letter.

All these skills involve writing on a computer, something most people beyond the boomer generation are used to. But if asked, most of those same people would honestly answer they are often challenged to write anything by hand. 

As an exercise that attempts to engage the writer at a different level, my students are asked to write on a business topic each week – by hand. It’s interesting to experience their varied and often agitated responses, including surprise that they’ve discovered they can still write by hand, that their composition may take on a different “feel”, shared feelings of being lost or fearful without “spell-check”, and even challenging me to translate or comprehend their writing as many feel their handwriting is nearly illegible.

While there may not be many, if any workplaces left that are free from keyboarding, it’s of interest to me that the current generation may lose the skill – and art – of handwriting. Reports of grade schools eliminating cursive writing from their curriculum abound. Are we seeing the passing of what was once a valued and beautiful form of art? (In my home, I have a framed message in Japanese calligraphy prepared by a visiting professor who was the calligraphy champion of his prefecture as a youth.)

Ava Jae, writing her blog entitled Writing by Hand vs. Typing: Is There a Difference?, addresses that question and includes powerful observations. (Please excuse the length of the quote, but I felt it important to include the reasoning behind her conclusion):

The reason I like handwriting my revisions is simple — I'm more careful when I write by hand. I'm not entirely sure why that is, but my guess is that it has to do with the process of typing versus handwriting itself. You see, typing is largely an automatic thing — your fingers jot down the first words that come to mind and allow you to keep up with the flow of your thoughts relatively well, which makes it a really good instrument for fast-drafting.

Writing by hand, however, is a completely different animal. Unless you're Flash or otherwise ridiculously fast, handwriting takes more time — you can't just tap a button and watch a letter appear, you have to write the letter out by hand, and although it doesn't take very long, it certainly takes longer than typing. When writing by hand your thoughts often race ahead of the actual writing, and as a result of that, you have a little more time to think about the words you're actually putting on paper. In addition to this, there isn't an easy backspace button to press if you write a word or sentence you don't like, which for me at least, causes me to be more careful with what I commit to paper.

In short, writing by hand forces me to think about the words I write as I write them, something that has proven invaluable while working on revisions.

I realize that there’s no going back to the “good old days” of everyone learning cursive writing. I was raised with the Palmer method – moving the writing hand on the fatty part of the arm in a circular motion. Despite the seemingly endless practice required for a 1940s third grader to master, I’m glad that I experienced that skill and discipline. I’m sure it has influenced the relative degree of legibility my writing now reflects.

A footnote: I could also reflect on how I was most likely intended to be left-handed, but since we used an ink pen with a removable stylus, dipped into an ink well in school, writing with the left hand caused the hand to smear the ink. Hence “everyone” was required to write with the right hand – but that’s a topic for a future blog.